therapist jobs in USVI

Peggy: Yours is a path that is needed, but not well paid. Because it is "government money" that will be funding what you do, you will probably need to be here to find work. Be very careful of anyone who promises you work, sight unseen. You will have difficulty getting e-mail responses from people in the know. Best wishes.

Peggy: I second East Ender's response. You should probably first go to the first announcement on this page posted by board moderator, "Islander" and, after sifting through all the information available, arrange to do a PMV to determine if (a) island life appeals to you and (b) meet with people in the field.

Danieljude on STX is a regular contributor to this forum and would appear to have the same psych background as you but has physical impairments from a bad accident which impedes him from doing much that he would like to do.

He might want to PM you or you can PM him. The best of luck to you!

Hello there. Thanks for making mention STTR as I might have missed this. In any event, Peggy, you would certainly qualify for licensure here, though it is very different than stateside. Psychotherapy, counseling, advising, whatever is not very popular here as to see someone is to be weak rather than to be disordered either temporarily or in a chronic manner.

The need certainly exists, as I watch people who are quite obviously in need of both medication and psychotherapy wandering the streets, however I think that a federal avenue would need to be sought. As I did consulting for the Feds for many years (SAMSHA) I would be happy to work on this with you. I was also a grant writer, but have hidden this for years as I kind of burned out on it.

There are public MH positions that are often hard to fill, however, my friend on the island of STX did some consulting for this group. He found it extremely frustrating. It seemed that each of the people went in with the best of intentions, yet was soon so frustrated that they just showed up and hoped to get through a day.

If you have been doing private work, I don't think the public options would work. I have spent twenty years working with individuals with autism spectrum disorders. I was trained by the best, was involved in the clinical trials with Yale Medical, etc. There is a group here for concerned parents of children with autism. I have a hard time even getting them to call me back.

I think the truth is that the longer one is here, the more will come. It is a creep, crawl, walk, run kind of thing in many areas of employment here. I am hoping that I am now comfortably in the crawling stage!

Oh! One final thing. I have submitted a proposal to UVI as one of the chief complaints of private, not for profits is that they have a hard time teaching people basic skills needed in human services (basic clinical skills, understanding and/or writing treatment plans, etc.). I suggested putting this into a series of CELL (sort of like continuing education) courses, and have a certificate at the end. This will give employers some idea of a level of competence. Interested? I certainly could not teach all, if it were accepted. As STTR mentioned, I am physically impaired, rather badly, and though I can think and love teaching, I could not do a great deal of the instruction unless it were spread over a very long period.

My email address is [email protected], my name is Dan, and please feel free to drop me a note about any of the above.

Warm regards,

Dan